Who was the real ‘Scarface’?
Brian De Palma’s 1983 crime thriller Scarface is now regarded as one of the greatest gangster movies ever made, with a showstopping performance by Al Pacino in the eponymous lead role. The movie centres on Miami-based Cuban mobsters who travelled to the United States from their homeland in 1980 on the Mariel boatlift.
As such, the film sheds light on the criminal underworld of drug trafficking contemporary to its production, albeit with some depictions of Cuban-Americans, which are occasionally considered as offensive stereotypes. But was it based on a true story? And was Pacino’s character Tony Montana a real person?
Well, no is the straightforward answer to this question. Oliver Stone’s script for the film was set within the general context of Marielito Cubans arriving in Miami. In real life, though, Tony Montana wasn’t one of these Cubans because he never existed.
However, Scarface itself is very much based on a true story, with a real person serving as inspiration for its title character. This answer might sound like a contradiction, but that’s because De Palma’s is actually an adaptation of Howard Hawks’ original 1932 movie Scarface.
Before De Palma signed on to direct, Sidney Lumet was in charge of the 1983 remake and suggested the film’s setting be updated to 1980s Miami, with class-A drugs serving as the Cuban mob’s main industry. On the other hand, the original movie was set in Chicago during the prohibition era and depicted Italian mobsters trafficking alcohol.
The first slasher movie?
The original Scarface character was directly inspired by one Italian mobster in particular. The most feared of them all, Al Capone, who was serving a prison sentence at the time of the film’s release.
Capone really was known as “Scarface”, although no one would dare call him by that moniker to his face. He got the nickname after the brother of a woman he insulted outside the speakeasy where he worked as a teenager and slashed the left side of his face with a knife. The scar remained for the rest of his life, much to Capone’s embarrassment. He always made sure he was photographed turning slightly to the left in order to hide it.
Hawks’ Scarface faithfully dramatises key events from Capone’s criminal career while disguising his character’s relation to the real-life mobster with the name Tony Camonte. For instance, the brutal St Valentine’s Day Massacre, which Capone is said to have ordered, is one of the movie’s climactic moments.
The film wouldn’t be the last authentic portrayal of Capone on the big screen. Al Pacino’s fellow Godfather actor Robert De Niro famously played the man known as Scarface in the 1987 The Untouchables, which was also directed by De Palma. Clearly there was some unfinished business with the legendary gangster that the director felt he had to take care of.
